We should probably also dump gym since most students are not going to be in the NFL. While we're at it let's drop learning some Shakespeare, practicing arts, learning world geography, and hearing history. Mike Judge really is the prophet!

Your point is very strong, but at the same time the color of one's skin and appearance isn't something you can just change and doesn't affect who an individual is as a person. If your grandad was a patron at another restaurant instead, he could be put out the door for exercising his freedom of speech.
I think more to the point though is the real answer is that the government should own the lines. Lease them to others to maintain and use, but it's in the people's (and thus government's) best interest that communications lines, on US soil at least, are safe from these sorts of things. Plus I'm sure they'd love to have easier access to spy on Americans.

No, it means that the business model of having interruptions (and harsh at that) to this kind of media will change. The content producers will make more use of product placement (even as part of the storyline? shudder) or do things that more engage the consumers with the product, like forums for LOST (complete with advertisements). Business models in a more and more pure digital age will either adapt or die.

They already patented lo-jack (or whatever). My on-star can also remotely disable my car. Why is it that if you say it's for a phone an introduce the words "take a picture" suddenly a patent is granted. Fuck I hate the US patent system.

We all love anecdotal evidence, and mine is 100-275MB/mo on wife's phone (Blackjack II) who is mostly email and lots of facebook, while my iPhone 3G usage is 500-1400MB/mo and I am definitely a power user (casual online games, push email for work, lots of internet referencing, and even RDP and some SOCKS tethering when on the road). This is over the past 14 months, so I suggest those freaking out to at least take a peek and see if they will actually be affected.

That assumes 100% of the people are there to pay a bill. In my experience they're there to bitch about yet another issue. In the 4 or 5 times I've stood in line I saw lots of people with a bill in hand (not guns though) and had a problem, like me, with their bill--and I paid online too, it's just more effective to bring up problems in person.

Because it just works simply enough that I turn it on and turn it up. No crazy menus or the like. My kids can use it. Plus it does one thing well, unlike the bolt-on camera on my phone. I do not have an Internet radio standalone unit, but I do have a divx player that my 4 year old operates (no moving parts and no disks). The price point still makes me cringe though, and historically these web music players have been overpriced. My $70 picture frame is wireless, gets images over UPnP, but can still stream divx (with sound) off the network (why?) and has room for flicker feeds. If it can do all that and still have a good pricepoint, why not these specialized units?

All security updates should be free as in beer. Patches that include features are for-pay. It's not my fault they released a product with security holes. I love car analogies, and it works pretty good here.